A world without war. No tech. No non-believers. And no freedom to leave. A thousand years in the future, only LandGods may travel without fear. Only LandGods can withstand the Plague and the Poison that defile life beyond the borders of the Six Villages. Those 'truths' parents have been teaching their children for generations. A massive volcano erupts, and the suffusion of ash into the atmosphere cools earth beyond any climate experienced by humans during the past than twenty thousand years. Crops fail in the agrarian society nestled in the flats between western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. LandGods take ever greater share of ever decreasing harvests, leaving tenant farmers who comprise a majority of the population in a perennial struggle to survive.

On the verge of adulthood at age eleven, Avery and Justin forge a taboo bond with the LandGod's daughter, M'ariana. Risking execution, the three friends venture to the Outlands where a recently opened sinkhole has exposed a library from an advanced but long-dead civilization-ours. The knowledge they gain threatens the power and authority of their overlords. M'ariana's father banishes Avery and arranges M'ariana's marriage. Instead, she and Justin join Avery in exile as they begin their quest for survival and attempt to resurrect the best of our lost civilization.

As people join the exiles in their new society, LandGods send an assassin.